by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)
Though she wished she could seat herself on the couch and let him wait on her as she'd done last night—it had certainly kept him too annoyed to even consider any attempt at a cease-fire—she simply couldn't do it. She was spoiled, yes, but she didn't overly take advantage of it, except with her father, and no matter how deeply Tyler's words had hurt, she didn't want to treat him badly because of it. It wasn't his fault he didn't reciprocate her feelings, and it certainly wasn't his fault that he equated her with words like mistake, screwup and distraction. It wasn't even his fault that she'd made it necessary for him to tell her so.
But she still didn't want to get close to him.
In her best imitation of Queen Gwendolyn, she went into the small kitchen, took a bowl from the cabinet and a spoon from the drawer. Tyler was cracking eggs into a larger bowl and frying a slice of ham in a skillet while biscuits baked in the oven, and she felt his wary gaze on her as she dished up a generous portion of chocolate-covered cherry ice cream. She concentrated on ignoring the fact that he was less than four feet away as she returned the carton to the freezer, even though she could smell his cologne and could feel the heat radiating from his body.
Holding the jar of fudge sauce in one hand, she tried to open it with the other, but her best efforts failed. Perplexed, she studied the lid, then gave it another mighty twist, but still it refused to budge. Having no idea what to do next, she was on the verge of mentally revising her menu to plain ice cream when Tyler reached around her, took the jar and opened it with ease, then set it in front of her. Set it there and retained hold of it, which kept him standing immediately behind her, so close that his shirt tickled against her bare arm. So close she was convinced she felt his breath stirring her hair.
When she realized her hands were trembling, quickly she lowered them to her sides, but when the trembling spread through her entire body, there was nothing she could do. She knew instinctively the only thing that would stop it was Tyler, holding her close, and there was no way he intended to do that.
"Thank you," she said, attempting to sound untouched and reaching for the jar from an angle calculated to minimize the risk of physical contact with him.
His fingers tightened around the jar when she pulled. "Annie." His voice was warm, husky and filled with regret.
"Princess," she corrected him quickly, shakily. "I believe it would be best if you refer to me by my title."
He withdrew emotionally before he drew back physically. She was filled with regret, also, but it was his doing. He was the one who thought she would destroy everything he was working for. He was the one who placed more importance on his father's approval than on the potential between them. "Sure, Your Highness," he said flippantly. "Anything you say."
His sarcasm made her mouth compress in a tight line and provoked her temper no small bit. But she wasn't going to respond. She was merely trying to place this disaster of a relationship on a footing which they could survive until the snow melted enough for her to depart, and she would not give in to his childish urge to see who could wound the other the most until then.
She spooned sauce over the ice cream, then replaced the cap. "Thank you for your assistance," she said politely as she left the kitchen.
He watched until she sat down on the sofa, then picked up the fudge jar, placed it in the refrigerator and closed the door with unnecessary effort. She made a mental note that the sauce required refrigeration, turned on the television and began to eat as she flipped through the channels.
She was well acquainted with the sayings that time crawled or flew, but she'd never experienced such tedium as she did that day. When she was convinced that it surely must be seven or eight o'clock at night, it was actually only noon. By the time 8:00 p.m. arrived, she was ready to walk out into the snow and scream. She wanted—no, needed to do something, go somewhere, hear a friendly voice. The tension inside the cabin was so intense the walls fairly vibrated with it, and it built a pressure in her head that made her yearn for release.
In the middle of yet another movie, she decided she could take no more. The night was still, and a full moon shone brightly on the snow. Swinging her feet to the floor, she sat on the edge of the couch, put on her socks and boots, then took her coat from the row of hooks behind the door.
"Where are you going?" Tyler sounded as pressured as she felt.
"For a walk."
"Now there's a bright idea. Have you noticed how deep the snow is?"
She refused to even glance at the windows. "I've been in snow before. My family has a winter place in the Alps where we've skied every winter since I was an infant."
"You skied as an infant," he repeated disbelievingly.
Ignoring him, she did up the buttons on her coat, then tied the belt tightly around her middle, wrapped her scarf around her hair and pulled on her gloves. She was in the process of unlocking and opening the door when abruptly his hand appeared above her head and slammed it again.
"You can't go out."
"Of course I can." Deliberately she wrapped her fingers around his wrist, and she imagined she felt the pulse there increase erratically as she pulled his hand away. He let her do so more to avoid contact with her, she suspected, than for any other reason.
She opened the door and for a moment stood motionless. She hadn't noticed how deep the snow was—in a word, very. There was no sign of the wood floor of the porch that fronted the cabin, no indication of the steps that led to the ground, certainly no hint of the ground. On the near side of the vehicle, the snow reached halfway up the door. On the opposite side, she could see, it had drifted practically to the roof.
Behind her the sound of Tyler's breathing was slow, steady, shallow. She glanced over her shoulder in his direction but was careful to not actually look at him, and dryly said, "Perhaps it will be a short walk." Then she stepped across the threshold and closed the door.
The night was still and bright. The snow turned the everyday mundane aspects of the world into strange shapes and rounded forms. It was breathtaking in its beauty, though she all too easily understood that it was' also tedious and quickly wore out its welcome. If she'd ever attained her goal of becoming a fairy, she would have used her magic to melt it all away—poof!—in an instant. A sprinkling of her fairy dust, and the harsh winter landscape, barren and brown, would return.
And she would take her leave of Tyler and go back to where she belonged.
Feeling homesick and heart-sore, she walked to the top of the steps, marked by the railing frosted with thick snow, and gazed out. Was Lucas somewhere around Garden City, looking out on the same snow, also wishing it away? She felt guilty that she had all but forgotten him in the past twenty-four hours. She was a bad sister, selfish and spoiled, just as Tyler had accused.
She wasn't surprised when the door behind her opened, or when Tyler, bundled in his coat and gloves, came to stand at the opposite side of the steps. She tried vainly to think of something to say—something neutral and impersonal, something with which he couldn't possibly take offense. All she came up with was hopelessly silly.
"Do you know snow provides such good insulation that you can build a cave in deep snow and heat it to a comfortable temperature with nothing more than a small candle?"
"Yeah. We did our survival training at your winter place in the Alps."
Of course they had. And they practiced covert landings on the beaches of Montebello and honed their helicopter insertion and extraction techniques in the island's interior. In his brief time with the organization, he'd learned more and done more than most men ever dreamed of. He'd found the career he wanted, and he held it much more dear than any spoiled little princess.
More than this spoiled little princess.
And what did it matter? she philosophically asked herself. So no man had ever kissed her the way he did. No man had ever made her feel the way he did. No man had ever tempted her. Another man would. Someone, somewhere, would kiss her and make her forget Tyler Ramsey existed.
Someday.
"Have you reported to your superiors that you're snowbound?"
"No. They track the weather. They'll know."
"I must remember to ask my sister if it also snowed in Billings. It wouldn't do to ruin a perfectly good lie with such a small detail as the weather. Then the truth would come out, and what might that do to your career?" She tried her genuine best to keep the bitterness from creeping into her voice in those last words, but it managed anyway. At best, he would ignore it. At worst, he might get angry.
Oh, well, again, what did it matter? Soon he would be gone from her life. Not soon enough, in her estimation, but soon.
Tyler's jaw throbbed from clenching it too often and too hard throughout the day. An ache had settled behind his eyes that wasn't going away no matter how many aspirin tablets he took, and his muscles felt as taut as when his training had pushed him past the point of fatigue. He felt lousy as hell, and the last thing he needed was Anna's subtle digs.
The first thing he needed was to get Annie back. She looked just like the royal brat, except she smiled a lot, clung to him, and was incredibly kissable, and while her dark eyes showed plenty of emotions, pain wasn't one of them.
But he couldn't have her back. The sooner he accepted that, the better.
Staring grimly across the snow, he finally responded to her question. "It would end my career. You would like that, wouldn't you?"
"No," she said quietly. "Not at all."
He wondered if he could believe her. Wondered if he could ask her to give him a chance—first to prove himself to his father, and then to her. If he could ask her to wait, to put her life on hold, to have no boyfriends and for damn sure no lovers until he'd earned his father's and his brothers' approval and respect, and then give him a chance to show himself worthy of her.
Oh, sure, why not? She was twenty-five years old, beautiful, a freakin' princess and a virgin. Hell, she'd probably be happy to lock herself away in the palace and mark off the days on the calendar until he accomplished something that, honesty forced him to admit, he might not be able to accomplish. What if he never succeeded? What if the only thing he proved was his unworthiness to be his father's son? And what if he did succeed and this thing between him and Anna turned out to be nothing more than hormones on her part? The princess amusing herself with the hired help. The virgin looking for an appropriate candidate to relieve her of her virginity.
My father has princes, nobility and sheiks asking for my hand in marriage , she'd said the night before. They offer power, riches, influence and alliances that could strengthen Montebello well into the next century. What could the Ramsey family joke offer that could possibly compare?
At least she'd spared him the humiliation of answering her own question: Nothing. He couldn't offer her anything except himself, and he knew too well that, at the moment, he was no prize, and might never be.
After another moment of awkward silence in a day filled with nearly a thousand of them, he leaned one shoulder against the post supporting the porch roof and made a simple request. "Tell me about Prince Lucas."
Anna took so long to answer that he thought she might refuse. Debating whether to cooperate with him? Weighing his request for information against her desire to keep him at a distance. Finally, though, she did answer. "He's ten years older than me—old enough that he didn't mind having me around as our sisters often did. He was my favorite, and I was his. I couldn't have asked for a better brother."
"How did he feel about the fact that one day he would become king?"
"How should he feel?" she asked with an elegant shrug. "How did your brother, Kyle, feel knowing that one day he was expected to take over your father's business?"
"You can't compare being CEO of an airplane parts manufacturing company to being king of a sovereign nation. Besides, Kyle had the option of walking away, which he did. Lucas doesn't have that option." Though he did have the option of disappearing, "forgetting" who he was and living life like a regular Joe for a time. Not that Tyler believed that was what the prince had done. It was just a possibility that had to be considered.
"It wasn't anything about which to have feelings," she replied. "I knew from the time I was small that I would grow up and become a woman. You knew you would grow up and become a man. Lucas knew he would become king. It was natural Merely one more aspect of his life."
"And he never rebelled? Never wanted to be just a normal man living a normal life?" As he'd done in Colorado for the past year.
"You can't judge the normalcy, or lack thereof, of Lucas's life by your own. His life is normal, for him. Most young boys don't grow up to become mercenaries, but for you, with your background, it's a perfectly normal thing to be. For a young prince, growing up to become king is also perfectly normal."
"I'm not really a mercenary."
"No?" She raised one brow. "You're a soldier for hire. Is that not the very definition of a mercenary?"
"Mercenaries work for the highest bidder. They'll do anything for anyone as long as the price is right. They show no loyalty to anyone, they care about no one but themselves, and they kill without conscience."
"And you, of course, are different."
The skepticism faintly underlying her words struck a nerve. Damn right he was different, and she should know it by now. Still, he reined in his defensiveness and answered calmly. "There are a lot of people out there with more money than your father ever dreamed of, but I would never work for them. And I don't hire out my services. I work for an organization that contracts with certain governments or groups to provide security, investigative and counter-terrorism measures. But the Noble Men live up to their name. We're not hired killers."
Finally she looked at him, her dark gaze steady. "Have you ever killed anyone?"
"No."
"Could you?"
His mouth thinned. "Yes. Under the right circumstances. To save my life. To save someone else's life." Most definitely to save her life.
She gave a small nod before gazing out again. There wasn't much to see besides the snow—a few lights in the direction of the ledge office, a few plumes of smoke drifting up from chimneys in the same direction, a bright moon and a sea of stars in a vast sky. "My brother may not appear to take his responsibilities seriously. He likes to party. He enjoys life. He adores women. But once he becomes king, all that will change. Tremendous responsibilities will be thrust upon him, and he'll lose much of the freedom he now has. No one in the palace blames him for enjoying life to the fullest while he can, but also no one doubts he'll settle down and discharge every one of those responsibilities to the fullest when the time comes."
It must be nice to know your family had such faith in you, Tyler thought. He wouldn't want to be king for anything, but he wouldn't mind having just a taste of that unwavering family support.
After another uncomfortable silence, the princess moved forward, brushed the snow from the stair railing, then gripped it as she took a tentative step, sinking through the snow until her foot made contact with the second step. "When I was a small child, I often wished to see Montebello in snow. On stars, on birthday candles, on Christmas lists, I asked for merely a small bit of snow—a few feet for a few days. I was never greedy. I must have been approximately nine when my tutor explained in no uncertain terms that the island had never had snow, would never have snow and, because of its location, could never have snow. I quit wishing then."
She moved to the next step, and the snow rose to mid-calf. At the bottom of the steps, the railing ended, and she carefully released it, then struggled a few steps away through snow that reached well above her knees.
"So you were a poor little princess, deprived of being a fairy, having snow on your tropical beach or making wishes."
Looking over her shoulder, she threw a feigned scowl his way. "It's a good thing you didn't grow up on Montebello," she said airily. "If you had, I would have had no choice but to have you thrown into the dungeon."
"I've been all through the palace, Princess. There i
s no dungeon."
"Of course it's not a part of the palace. The royal family have no wish to be disturbed by the wretched cries of their wayward subjects who find themselves in need of redirection."
Though careful that she couldn't hear it, Tyler gave a heavy sigh of relief. Dealing with the Anna who could tease was no big deal, as long as he remembered to keep his hands to himself. This Anna was tempting, no doubt, and made him want far more than he could have, but all he needed was frequent reminders to keep his distance, and he could do it. He swore he could.
"And you think I need redirection?"
"Your sarcasm speaks for itself. You lack proper respect for my station in life. You fail to grasp the first and simplest rule of being a loyal subject."
"Which is?"
"If the royals aren't happy, then their subjects are unhappy as well."
Moving as cautiously as she had, he started down the steps. "I lack proper respect? Who flashed her pearly whites within minutes of boarding the plane in San Sebastian and decreed that I should call you Anna? Who insisted on acting like a regular person?" Except when her feelings were hurt, which she tried to hide behind the cool, aloof facade of exalted princess. "Who didn't think twice about lying, sneaking off and deceiving her entire family about her activities, and then dragging me into her deception, too?"
As he approached her, she retreated, though she made very slow progress through the deep snow. "I gave my plans a great deal of thought," she disagreed earnestly. "From the moment I heard the news from Colorado that Lucas was still alive, I thought of little else but his rescue and what I could do to assist. And I thought more than twice about your part in it. I even regretted that it might reflect badly on you … at least, until I got to know you."